Colloquium: Taming infinities

18 March 2016, 4.00 PM - 18 March 2016, 5.00 PM

Prof Martin Hairer FRS (Warwick)

Mott Lecture Theatre, School of Physics

Some physical and mathematical theories have the unfortunate feature that if one takes them at face value, many quantities of interest appear to be infinite! Various techniques, usually going under the common name of “renormalisation” have been developed over the years to address this, allowing mathematicians and physicists to tame these infinities. We will tip our toes into some of the mathematical aspects of these techniques and we will see how they have recently been used to make precise analytical statements about the solutions of some equations whose meaning was not even clear until now.